A raccoon, gray tail still intact, head askew across the highway
Left to decompose on the county road, under spring’s thawing sun.
A sadness swells my throat, a differing of points of view
Where wild used to be, the raccoon mistakes concrete for dirt
Headlights for predator eyes, glowing in the complete night
Crushed undertire, underfoot, underpaw—
Sweep his carcass off that once-grass gravel
The fields of wildflowers and sideoats grama
Given way to industrialism, to a streak of urbanization
So far out in the sticks that even the animals do not know
Where the country ends and the city now begins.